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Physical Review Letters -- June 5, 2000 -- Volume 84, Issue 23, pp. 5371-5374

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Island Nucleation in Thin-Film Epitaxy: A First-Principles Investigation

Kristen A. Fichthorn1 and Matthias Scheffler2
1Department of Chemical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802
2Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Faradayweg 4-6, D-14195 Berlin, Germany

(Received 17 December 1999)

We describe a theoretical study of the role of adsorbate interactions in island nucleation and growth, using Ag/Pt(111) heteroepitaxy as an example. From density-functional theory, we obtain the substrate-mediated Ag adatom pair interaction and we find that, past the short range, a repulsive ring is formed about the adatoms. The magnitude of the repulsion is comparable to the diffusion barrier. In kinetic Monte Carlo simulations, we find that the repulsive interactions lead to island densities over an order of magnitude larger than those predicted by nucleation theory and thus identify a severe limitation of its applicability. ©2000 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v84/p5371
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.5371
PACS: 68.55.-a, 68.35.Fx, 81.15.Aa, 82.20.Mj        Additional Information


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Citing Articles

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  1. Neglected adsorbate interactions behind diffusion prefactor anomalies on metals
    S. Ovesson et al., Phys. Rev. B 64, 125423 (2001)
  2. Self-diffusion on (100), (110), and (111) surfaces of Ni and Cu: A detailed study of prefactors and activation energies
    Ulrike Kürpick, Phys. Rev. B 64, 075418 (2001)
  3. Metal homoepitaxial growth at very low temperatures:   Lattice-gas models with restricted downward funneling
    K. J. Caspersen et al., Phys. Rev. B 64, 075401 (2001)
  4. Substrate Mediated Long-Range Oscillatory Interaction between Adatoms: Cu/Cu(111)
    Jascha Repp et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 2981 (2000)

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